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New Releases January 9—January 15 and Readers Choice Contest

This week will be the “slow week” in January for new releases. Still, there are almost twenty new books from which to select.

What do you want to read this week? As always, leave a comment telling me the book you’d most like to win, and maybe random.org will make your wishes come true. Your choice of print or digital unless otherwise stated. International? Of course! As long as Book Depository delivers to your country, please enter. If you’d prefer the first book in a series listed here, that’s okay, too.

Shadow Wrack (Eldritch Manor #2), by Kim Thompson, (January 9, Dundurn Press)
After battling and defeating the forces of darkness, Willa is looking forward to a little well-earned peace and quiet. Her recent adventures have given birth to brand-new problems, not the least of which is the task of rebuilding Eldritch Manor from the ground up. The old folks are getting into more and more trouble and Willa is in the middle of it: Mab’s fairies have declared war on the dwarf construction crew, Willa’s Mom and Belle aren’t speaking to each other, the Phoenix squawks all night long, Baz is running amok with the neighborhood cats, Horace is acting weird, and Miss Trang is never around when you need her. To be perfectly honest, Willa is starting to think the forces of darkness were easier to handle than her family and friends.

Ancestral Machines (Humanity’s Fire #4), by Michael Cobley, (January 12, Orbit)
It was named Bringer of Battles, three hundred worlds orbiting a single artificial star, three hundred battlefields where different species vie for mastery and triumph. It is a cage where war is a game, brutal, savage and sudden. In this arena, all must bend the knee to the Lords of Permutation and the ancient sentient weapons with which they have merged. Or suffer indescribable agonies. Trapped in this draconian crucible of death, Brannan Pyke, captain and smuggler, must fight his way to freedom. Because in the Bringer of Battles, the game of war is played to the death and beyond.

And Again, by Jessica Chiarella, (January 12, Touchstone)
Would you live your life differently if you were given a second chance? Hannah, David, Connie, and Linda, four terminally ill patients, have been selected for the SUBlife pilot program, which will grant them brand-new, genetically perfect bodies that are exact copies of their former selves, without a single imperfection. Without their old bodies, their new physical identities have been lost. Hannah, an artistic prodigy, has to relearn how to hold a brush; David, a Congressman, grapples with his old habits; Connie, an actress tries to navigate an industry obsessed with physical beauty; and Linda, who spent eight years paralyzed after a car accident, now struggles to reconnect with a family that seems to have built a new life without her. As each tries to re-enter their previous lives and relationships they are faced with the question: how much of your identity rests not just in your mind, but in your heart, your body?

Destroyer (Rewinder #2), by Brett Battles, (January 12, 47North)
With the whole of human history altered, Denny Younger may be the last rewinder in existence, and the last person on earth with a chaser unit capable of time travel. While caring for his ailing sister, Denny must discover a way to recharge his device before he’s left with no defense against a past that wants him dead. Before long, Denny notices a mysterious stranger following him, keeping tabs on Denny, his family, and his friends. Is Denny just paranoid? Or maybe he isn’t alone in this new reality after all. When his chaser is stolen and his girlfriend is kidnapped, Denny risks everything to get both of them back. Launched into a high-stakes chase that spans continents and millennia, Denny’s responsibility to save our future isn’t over yet. It will take all of his cunning to stop a threat capable of steering the fate of the human race into disaster.

Eleanor, by Jason Gurley, (January 12, Crown)
Eleanor and Esmerelda are identical twins with a secret language all their own, inseparable until a terrible accident claims Esme’s life. Eleanor’s family is left in tatters. Years pass, and Eleanor’s painful reality begins to unravel. The first time it happens, she walks through a school doorway, and finds herself in a cornfield. When she stumbles back into her own world, time has flown by without her. Again and again, against her will, she falls out of her world and into other, stranger ones. One fateful day, Eleanor leaps from a cliff and is torn from her world altogether. She meets a mysterious stranger, Mea, who reveals to Eleanor the weight of her family’s loss. Eleanor must learn how deep the well of her mother’s grief and her father’s heartbreak truly goes. Esmerelda’s death was not the only tragic loss in her family’s fragmented history, and unless Eleanor can master her strange new abilities, it may not be the last.

Of Flame and Promise (Weird Girls #6), by Cecy Robson, (January 12, Loveswept)
Cursed by a spell meant to destroy them, Taran Wird and her sisters instead developed unique magical talents. With the power of fire and lightning literally at her fingertips, Taran doesn’t fear much. Only one thing terrifies her: commitment. Taran is crazy about her boyfriend, Gemini, a sexy were with the ability to split into two separate wolves. After watching her sister go through heartbreak with the pack’s Alpha, Taran knows not to count on happily ever after, despite Gemini’s desire to claim her as his mate. Reluctantly, she agrees to meet his very traditional and conservative parents. Taran’s a badass with a mouth to match, and Gemini loves her for it. She’s just not positive these attributes will please Mom and Dad. Every attempt by Taran to bond with Gemini’s folks proves disastrous. Taran finds that winning them over means unleashing her powers, and proving that this foul-mouthed fire-starter is a force to be reckoned with. (ebook only)

Skinner Luce, by Patricia Sarrafian Ward, (January 12, Talos)
All around us lurks a dangerous alien race. The Nafikh inhabit human bodies while visiting Earth, and an underground system designed to disguise and protect them from being discovered. The circumstances of these brutal visits require the sacrifice of servs. Servs are aliens, created by the Nafikh to attend to their every need. Physically indistinguishable from humans, their very livelihood regulated by the Source, a powerful force of energy inside each of them. Lucy is a serv who arrived a baby, and adopted by humans. For years she has been walking a tightrope, balancing between the horrors of her serv existence and the ordinary human life she longs to maintain. When the body of a serv child turns up and Lucy is implicated in the death, the worlds she’s tried so hard to keep separate collide. Hounded by the police, targeted in the dog-eat-dog world of servs, she’ll find herself fighting to protect her family and the life she’s made for herself.

Teen Frankenstein (High School Horror Story #1), by Chandler Baker, (January 12, Feiwel & Friends)
It was a dark and stormy night when Tor Frankenstein accidentally hit someone with her car. And killed him. But all is not lost, Tor, being the scientific genius she is, brings him back to life. Thus begins a twisty, turn-y take on a familiar tale, set in the town of Hollow Pines, Texas, where high school is truly horrifying.

The Dirt on Ninth Grave (Charley Davidson #9), by Darynda Jones, (January 12, St. Martin’s Press)
In a small village in New York lives Jane Doe, a girl with no memory of who she is or where she came from. She is working at a diner and slowly begins to realize she can see dead people. Stranger still are the people entering her life. They seem to know things about her. Things they hide with lies and half-truths. She senses something far darker. A force that wants to cause her harm. Her saving grace comes in the form of a new friend she feels she can confide in and the fry cook. The more lies that swirl around her, the more disoriented she becomes, until she is confronted by a man who claims to have been sent to kill her. Sent by the darkest force in the universe. To find her identity and recover what she’s lost will take all her courage and a touch of the power she feels flowing like electricity through her veins. She almost feels sorry for him. The devil in blue jeans. She will get to the bottom of what he knows if it kills her. Or him.

The Drowning Eyes, by Emily Foster, (January 12, Tor.com)
When the Dragon Ships began to tear through the trade lanes and ravage coastal towns, the hopes of the arichipelago turned to the Windspeakers on Tash. The solemn weather-shapers with their eyes of stone can steal the breeze from raiders’ sails and save the islands from their wrath. But the Windspeakers’ magic has been stolen, and only their young apprentice Shina can bring their power back and save her people. Tazir has seen more than her share of storms and pirates in her many years as captain, and she’s not much interested in getting involved in the affairs of Windspeakers and Dragon Ships. Shina’s caught her eye, but that might not be enough to convince the grizzled sailor to risk her ship, her crew, and her neck.

The Killing Jar, by Jennifer Bosworth, (January 12, Farrar, Straus and Giroux BYR)
Seventeen-year-old Kenna Marsden has a secret. She’s haunted by a violent tragedy she can’t explain. Kenna’s past has kept people, even her own mother, at a distance for years. Just when she finds a friend who loves her and life begins to improve, she’s plunged into a new nightmare. Her mom and twin sister are attacked, and the dark powers Kenna has struggled to suppress awaken with a vengeance. Kenna is exiled to a nearby commune, known as Eclipse, to live with a relative she never knew she had. She discovers an extraordinary new way of life as she learns who she really is, and the wonders she’s capable of. She starts to feel like she belongs somewhere. That her terrible secret makes her beautiful and strong, not dangerous. The longer she stays at Eclipse, the more she senses there is something malignant lurking underneath it all. And she begins to suspect that her new family has sinister plans for her.

The Two of Swords: Part Twelve, by K.J. Parker, (January 12, Orbit)
A soldier with a gift for archery. A woman who kills without care. Two brothers, both unbeatable generals, now fighting for opposing armies. No one in the vast and once glorious United Empire remains untouched by the rift between East and West, and the war has been fought for as long as anyone can remember. Some still survive who know how it was started, but no one knows how it will end. The story of a war on a grand scale, told through the eyes of its soldiers, politicians, victims and heroes. (ebook only)

This Census-Taker, by China Miéville, (January 12, Del Rey)
In a remote house on a hilltop, a lonely boy witnesses a profoundly traumatic event. He tries, and fails, to flee. Left alone with his increasingly deranged parent, he dreams of safety, of joining the other children in the town below, of escape. When at last a stranger knocks at his door, the boy senses that his days of isolation might be over. But by what authority does this man keep the meticulous records he carries? What is the purpose behind his questions? Is he friend? Enemy? Or something else altogether?

Traveler (Seeker #2), by Arwen Elys Dayton, (January 12, Delacorte Press)
Quin Kincaid is a Seeker. Her legacy is an honor, an ancient role passed down for generations. But what she learned on her Oath night changed her world forever. Quin pledged her life to deception. Her legacy as a Seeker is not noble but savage. Her father, a killer. Her uncle, a liar. Her mother, a casualty. And the boy she once loved is out for vengeance, with her family in his sights. Yet Quin is not alone. Shinobu, her oldest companion, might now be the only person she can trust. The only one who wants answers as desperately as she does. But the deeper they dig into the past, the darker things become. There are long-vanished Seeker families, shadowy alliances, and something else: a sinister plan begun generations ago, with the power to destroy them all. The past is close. And it will destroy them all.

Written in Fire (Brilliance Saga #3), by Marcus Sakey, (January 12, Thomas & Mercer)
For thirty years humanity struggled to cope with the brilliants, the 1 percent of people born with remarkable gifts. For thirty years we tried to avoid a devastating civil war. We failed. The White House is a smoking ruin. Madison Square Garden is an internment camp. In Wyoming, an armed militia of thousands marches toward a final, apocalyptic battle. Nick Cooper has spent his life fighting for his children and his country. Now, as the world staggers on the edge of ruin, he must risk everything he loves to face his oldest enemy, a brilliant terrorist so driven by his ideals that he will sacrifice humanity’s future to achieve them.

Finnegan’s Field: A Tor.Com Original, by Angela Slatter, (January 13, Tor)
A dark fantasy novelette about a six year old child who mysteriously disappears for three years, only to return home just as mysteriously, but not quite the same. At least, not to her mother. (ebook only)

Goldenfire (Dark Haven #2), by A.F.E. Smith, (January 14, Harper Voyager)
In Darkhaven, peace doesn’t last long. Ayla Nightshade has ruled Darkhaven for three years. With the help of Tomas Caraway, her Captain of the Helm, she has overcome her father’s legacy to find new confidence in herself and her unusual shapeshifting abilities. Yet three years ago, a discovery was made that could have profound consequences for the Nightshade line: a weapon exists that can harm even the powerful creatures they turn into. And now, that knowledge has fallen into the wrong hands. An assassin is coming for Ayla, and will stop at nothing to see her dead. (ebook only)

Scarred (Sapphire City Series #2), by Erica Hayes, (January 14, Harper Impulse)
Superpowers don’t make you a hero. Verity Fortune’s crime-fighting days are over. In exile, defeated by her smug supervillain nemesis, her shady past exposed, even her own superpowered family condemn her as a traitor. Whatever it takes, Verity’s determined to prove she can still be a force for good. Now, Sapphire City faces a new threat. A delinquent duo with extraordinary powers and a terrifying talent for destruction. Outmatched and on the run, her telekinetic powers faltering, Verity can’t defeat this menace alone, but who can she trust, when the only person who believes in her is her arch-enemy? (ebook only)

The small print: This contest is international to any place Book Depository ships. Contests end at midnight CDT U.S. on Saturday, and winners will be announced on Sunday’s blog. It’s the responsibility of the winner to contact me with their mailing info.

So many interesting releases this week! Id love a copy of Teen Frankenstein, first book in the Charley Davidson series, Killing Jar, or the first book in Erica Hayes’ Sapphire City series. Haha, but anyway, thanks again for the update and giveaway!